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He grows up on stories about Alderaan, told by his mother in between long meetings and even longer flights from one planet to the other. She paints him the image with words, but he can see it in his mind: the rich green forests and mountain tops covered in snow. Ben learns to love it, yearns for the cool breeze of wind on his face and the crunch of fallen leaves under his feet. He wants to go there one day, get lost in the woods for days, hearing nothing but the soft whispers of trees and chirrups of birds above his head. It will be the beginning of summer, when the nature grows high and strong, vivid colours of spring still not diminished by the warmth of the sun. He promises himself to be careful, thoughtful not to disturb anything on the surface of the planet as he trails after the tracks left by animals deep in the wilds.
He dreams of walking until his legs are bloody and sore, his lungs full of clear air that was not filtered by the lifesupport of a ship, his pale skin burnt to dark brown by the sun. Then, when his body is tired and spent, he will wander into the labyrinths of the cities blended into mountainsides, surrounded with lush gardens and polished white stone. The crowds gathered for the first days of a festival will sweep him along, the voices of people so loud after months of seclusion. He dreams of their smiles, songs which mingle with laughter, warm hands in his own.
Curled up on his bunk on board of yet another ship, Ben weaves his fantasies without restraint, dreaming of the place his mother calls home, the word still foreign on his tongue, but already claimed as his own.
He is seven when they tell him that Alderaan is gone, has been gone since before Ben was born.
“It was as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror,” his uncle tells him, and Luke’s voice is nearly void of all emotion, as if that tragedy could be narrated as a historical fact, only in quotes, “and were suddenly silenced.”
The history of the universe goes in circles, he thinks, as Hosnian system burns in front of his eyes. Every single living being is born and lives and dies. All of this is a nightmare which comes to him often: a great beam of light which tears apart the darkness of space, unstoppable and bright enough to blind him when he is not able to look away. For the first time he can hear the screams, loud enough to drown his own voice. It only lasts a few seconds, but for a moment he is nobody, not Kylo Ren and certainly not Ben Solo, who sometimes still cries deep inside his mind.
Now, when Kylo sleeps, he sees the rain, because it always rains on Arkanis.
It is not his dream; this is what Hux dreams about every night: the smell of rich black soil, rustle of wet leaves, soft patter of raindrops on his windowsill. From the place he once called home, it is almost impossible to see stars. The sky clears rarely, its brilliant blue covered by the clouds, and he remembers every single time he could see the small shining dots in the blackness of the night.
Hux dreams of drowning in the endless rain, riverbanks overflowing, the cold waters of the lake closing over his head as it fills his chest to bursting. He feels bound, trapped, the long ropes of algae tightening its hold on his limbs, the dream devolving into a nightmare. His memories call him back, but there is nothing to return to, the wide halls of his home empty, antiques wrapped carefully in expanses of white sheets.
There are times when Kylo sees Tarkin in Hux, Tarkin the Destroyer of Alderaan, whose name Ben Solo cursed into long, sleepless nights. They have the same tension in their shoulders, lips set into tight line, the military gaunt Ben Solo’s mother sees in her nightmares. But Kylo is no longer Ben, and he reaches out his hand not to help, but to take back what is his.
Every night, Hux breaks the surface of the lake snarling, red hair dripping with water, the foreign presence already gone from his mind as the dream falls apart all around him.
“The home is not a place, not really,” Ben’s mother would tell him if he thought to ask, but he did not. “It’s the people we mourn when it is destroyed.”